Beloved YMCA instructor ‘just radiated joy’ wherever she went

When Sabrina Woods Henry Freeman taught water aerobics classes at the Downtown YMCA, she didn’t simply show what moves participants needed to make.

She simultaneously put on a performance from her perch alongside the pool.

On May 3, at what would unexpectedly be her final class, Woods belted Beyonce’s “Single Ladies,” she crooned to Motown classics and cooled things down by taking everyone to church with a bit of gospel-inspired singing.

Her final move was two stretches that purposely ended in everyone basically hugging themselves, after which she encouraged her students to love themselves, be good to themselves — hydrate! — and have an especially great week.

Many from the class stopped to wish her well, too, but a day later, Woods, 58, died from a suspected heart attack while cooking her husband dinner on their second anniversary.

“She doesn’t realize the imprint she has left on people and how much she changed people’s lives,” said Twyla Anderson, Freeman’s sister.

Freeman’s death was such a shock, Anderson still talks about her in the present tense.

“She has so much light that she pours into everybody that you can’t help but be a better person because of her.”

Freeman’s high-wattage smile alone was enough to bring brightness to someone’s — really, everyone’s — day.

“She just radiated joy,” said Lisa Hittle, a Friends University emeritus jazz professor.

“It just spilled out of her. You could not help but smile in her class.”

Hittle liked how Freeman would enter the pool area wheeling a speaker that “was already turned up real loud.”

“She would dance her way in. . . . That was just, like, setting the mood for the class.”

Hittle loved Freeman’s dancing and praised her “beautiful voice,” which came from decades of singing in church, starting when she was young and singing with her mother, who also introduced her to opera.

“Man, she loved to sing gospel, and that was her gift,” said Freeman’s cousin, Ricky Brown. “She would set it on fire.”

Freeman often sang at funerals.

“She just put chills through your body,” said Lolita Irvey, another cousin. “Just the sound of her voice.”

Veronika Henderson, Freeman’s daughter, said her mother “had a voice of an angel” even in more earthly, mundane moments.

“She would have us up on Saturdays cleaning the house and turning the music up and singing to it.”

As Henderson and her brother, D’Andre Crosby — Freeman’s only other child — have been going through their mother’s files since her death, they’ve found all kinds of things from their childhoods that Freeman had color coordinated and neatly organized.

“We were laughing because my mom was very meticulous.”

Others noticed it, too.

When Freeman started with the Sedgwick County appraiser’s office almost 36 years ago, she was out in the field and would go house to house taking measurements for appraisals.

Her last position was information and assistance supervisor.

Several people in the office called Freeman an irreplaceable leader, mentor and friend known for her positivity, whether it was keeping her cool when trying to help frustrated property owners or for often starting work by greeting coworkers with, “We are going to have another fun-filled day!”

People around the office also noticed Freeman’s style as she skipped the polo shirts so many of them wear to show her individuality through fashion. On the rare occasions she wore jeans, she’d also don cowboy boots like her father used to wear.

“Above all, Sabrina had a caring heart and a gift for making people feel seen and important,” Appraiser Deanna Aspedon wrote in a collective tribute from her staff. “She made people look forward to coming to work simply because of the warmth and positivity she brought into their lives.”

Freeman became a water aerobics instructor after first turning to the YMCA for her own health.

She’d lost her parents in fairly quick succession, and Freeman was diagnosed as prediabetic.

She came to not only focus on her own health but that of others, too.

Longtime close friend Lynn Crayton said Freeman helped her lose 70 pounds.

“She was my rah-rah girl at times,” Crayton said. “She believed in taking care of yourself.”

If some of her students couldn’t do a certain move or had to modify it in some way, Freeman would assure them it didn’t matter and enthusiastically encourage them to “just keep moving!”

Eventually, she didn’t need to finish the sentence because the class would shout it for her.

Along with her 14 grandchildren, faith was particularly important to Freeman.

“She loved God, I’ll tell you what,” Crayton said.

“She was a warm, loving soul that God gave to us,” Anderson said. “God gave her to us for a reason.”

It’s harder to understand why he might have taken her, she said.

Anderson wondered “if the weight of the world was starting to really get to her.”

“She was tired of watching the way the world was heading. She was hurting by a lot of the things that were going on.

“Sometimes, God sees his angels are struggling,” Anderson said.

“He takes them and sets them free, and I think that maybe God thought this was the time to bring his songbird home. . . . She finally got her wings to go home and sing.”

Reporter Carrie Rengers was a fan of Freeman, her singing and her water aerobics classes and will always hear her voice encouraging her to “just keep moving!”